Pre-cbs bodies more pieces bodies

[guitarman555]

Hey pre-cbs jaguar and jazzmaster owners, could you look, where are your pre-cbs guitar bodies joint? Is that possible that joint can lead at the edge the neck pocket? Or just option where the joint is located more on the bottom / upper part of body? (this is I think most common that one part of wood is significantly bigger than the other part). I have seen pre-cbs jag that has the joint close to centre (almost at the level of the neck pocket, almost copyying the low e string, passing just 3 mms far from edge of neck plate, basically copying bass E string), seems unusual, right?

 

[guitarman555]

Hey pre-cbs jaguar and jazzmaster owners, could you look, where are your pre-cbs guitar bodies joint? Is that possible that joint can lead at the edge the neck pocket? Or just option where the joint is located more on the bottom / upper part of body? (this is I think most common that one part of wood is significantly bigger than the other part). I have seen pre-cbs jag that has the joint close to centre (almost at the level of the neck pocket, almost copyying the low e string, passing just 3 mms far from edge of neck plate, basically copying bass E string), seems unusual, right?

Any jazzmaster or jaguar geeks here?

 

[RLW59]

Even on the Fender guitar forums, the offsets are kind of a niche topic. And pre-CBS narrows it down even further.

As a general pre-CBS practice, the body pieces were random widths. On Strats and Teles the seam was more often offset to the treble side so the pickguard/control plate/jack cup would obscure the seam somewhat. I assume the offsets were similar (but the gigantic pickguard/control plates on the offsets might have covered so much that they were less inclined to put the seam on the treble side.)

Center seams (or near center seams) did happen. Random width individual pieces means some of them are wider than half the body width, some are less than half, and some of them are nearly half. There's a lot of less than half body widths, anywhere from 2"~5". And a lot of more than half body widths, anywhere from 7"~11". But only a few boards that are just about half a body width, so only a few bodies are center seamed.

The seam you describe is a less common location but not really "unusual".

 

[Resident 217]

A luthier friend of mine recently cut an offset Mahogany body for me to use on my revamped 27inch baritone.
He did a centre seam. I'm unsure if it makes any difference.
I've seen many different companies guitars and they seams are all over the map.

 

[Matthews Guitars]

What I've read from RLW59 matches what I had already believed to be true from what I'd learned previously. Fender bodies have usually been built butcher block style, with no clearly defined spec for how wide the pieces are or where the join line is. What you get is what you got.

In truth it'll make no difference. Ten piece body or one piece body, tonally it makes no difference as long as the glue joints are solid and hold the body together well.

 

[Biggin900s]

Glue joints and multiple piece bodies don't resonate like one piece bodies thats why you pay a premium for em they knew that in the 50’s

 

[anitoli]

My understanding ( this may be wrong but i read it somewhere) multi piece bodies were adopted because they stopped warpage and were cheaper.